


fear like blood in your veins

by Anonymous



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caleb Widogast Is Horny and Terrified, Choking, Coming In Pants, Death Threats, Knives, Other, Threats of Violence, Verbal Humiliation, Wet Dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 17:10:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19338907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "Look at the little flame flicker," Astrid calls out, voice echoing around the chamber, distorting as it bounces off crystalline walls, "trying so hard to stay lit. But you burned your brightest a long time ago, little flame. You burned so bright you nearly went out." There's a crunching sound as she starts to move, and it's coming from in front of him and behind him and yet the shadow behind the pillar hasn't moved an inch.Caleb's heart is racing, blood pumping through his system as fast as it can while his brain screams at himrun or fight, you have to choosebut he can only freeze in place. His knees go weak and it takes everything he has to remain standing, to not collapse onto the ground and curl into as small a ball as possible.Then the second voice comes.





	fear like blood in your veins

**Author's Note:**

> alternate title: "caleb 'mark me down as scared and horny' widogast is back on his bullshit"
> 
> this gets into some weird+kinda dark stuff so more detailed warnings with mild spoilers in end notes

He doesn't know how he got here. He's standing, back pressed against some kind of wall or other hard, relatively vertical surface but he's disoriented and his head is throbbing and he wants to throw up or collapse or both. His vision is blurry and it won't clear no matter how many times he blinks. All he can see are pink-purple blurs all around him, and they could be _anything._ There's a faint sound like boots walking on shattered glass, a sort of crunching and grinding noise. The footsteps are near, then far, then the echoes are too much and there could be one hundred people all around him or a single person far away. He opens his eyes- he must have closed them at some point- and this time, his vision is clear, like there had never been a problem in the first place.

He is in what looks to be an enormous crystal cavern, with walls that seem to almost have been polished smooth and gigantic pillars of semi-translucent purple quartz throughout the room. There must be some kind of light source because he can see, and there's a pleasantly dim glow that fills the room. The smell in the cavern is earth and must and mineral and something arcane, the faint scent of ozone and magic. Immediately his forearms start to tingle like thousands of insects are crawling on his skin, millions of small scratchy legs moving across his flesh, itching and tickling and gods, he needs to scratch, he needs to stop the itching-

He’s halfway through frantically unwrapping his right arm when he hears a crunch like a footstep behind one of the closest pillars. There’s someone back there, because there’s the shadow of a figure just barely through the crystal. Their proportions are distorted and strange- arms and legs too long, torso too short, head too small for whatever size body it actually has. It’s frightening, and Caleb flinches back as much as he can with his back already against a wall. Then, the figure laughs. It’s hard and sharp like the crystal shards underfoot, and it is so horribly, terrifyingly familiar. 

It's not the laugh he heard when he had singed off his eyebrows trying to light the fireplace with a firebolt, nor is it the laugh he'd heard when Eodwulf sneezed so hard that milk came out of his nose. It's not that laugh- not exactly. But it _sounds_ like that laugh, and every hair on the nape of his neck is standing straight up.

"Look at the little flame flicker," Astrid calls out, voice echoing around the chamber, distorting as it bounces off crystalline walls, "trying so hard to stay lit. But you burned your brightest a long time ago, little flame. You burned so bright you nearly went out." There's a crunching sound as she starts to move, and it's coming from in front of him and behind him and yet the shadow behind the pillar hasn't moved an inch.

Caleb's heart is racing, blood pumping through his system as fast as it can while his brain screams at him _run or fight, you have to choose_ but he can only freeze in place. His knees go weak and it takes everything he has to remain standing, to not collapse onto the ground and curl into as small a ball as possible.

Then the second voice comes.

"Poor little Bren," Eodwulf whispers, and it sounds like he's just to the right of Caleb. When he whips his head around to look, though, there's only crystal. There has only ever been crystal.

"Poor little Bren, Master Ikithon's prized pupil, his _favorite,_ his _most promising student._ Poor, poor little Bren." 

The voice is coming from his left now, but when he turns to look, there's nothing. He's alone, alone and terrified and even as his vision starts to darken with fear, there's something low in his gut that starts to stir.

"He expected so much from you, _Schatz,_ and you let him down." The shadow behind the pillar is gone. "You let _us_ down."

"But we aren't here to talk about the past, are we, little flame?" Astrid's voice sounds like it's getting closer, as do the crunching and grinding footsteps, but Caleb can't see anyone or anything but crystal and that dim, sourceless glowing.

"I-" _I don't know,_ he wants to say, _I don't know why you're here, why you're doing this._ But the words won't form right, they just keep coming out as stutters and mumbling. He can't think straight, he's dizzy, he's so _scared_ and he wants his friends-

There's a hand on his throat, the skin hot and rough and the pressure just barely shy of enough to crush his windpipe. Wulf was always good at knowing how much a person could take, and he had only refined that skill as time went on. Instinctively, Caleb's hands come up, fingers gripping at Wulf's wrist, nails digging in as hard as he can manage.

"This is pathetic, _Liebchen,_ " he says, leaning in so close his lips brush the shell of Caleb's ear, "you've gotten so _weak._ " His body presses into Caleb's as he moves impossibly closer, and as he wedges a thigh between Caleb's legs, he barks out a surprised laugh.

"Gods, Bren, it seems that at least _some_ things haven't changed." Caleb can't groan, can't whine because he doesn't have nearly enough air for that, but the jolt of pleasure that shoots through him as Wulf grinds his thigh against his cock would have him gasping in any other situation. 

"Sweet thing," Eodwulf murmurs into his ear, "sweet, perverted little thing. You're so scared you can't even speak, but you're about to come in your smallclothes all the same. Aren't you?" 

His hand withdraws from Caleb's throat and he gasps painfully, the air aching in his empty lungs. He draws breath after desperate breath, hands on his thighs as he bends over. His head is throbbing, the room is spinning, and just as he starts to get his bearings again, Eodwulf has been replaced by empty air. Caleb’s hand automatically moves to his throat, finding it still tender to the touch. He lines his fingers up where Wulf's were and squeezes gently, both dreading and missing the force, the pressure. A full-body shudder runs through him, and he aches. _Pathetic._

“Aren’t you embarrassed? Aren’t you _ashamed_ that you’ve fallen so low? You used to be so amazing, Bren. You used to be _special_. Now you’re just another walking corpse.”

"We're going to kill you." Astrid's voice is sickly-sweet, the same one she would use to try and bargain with shopkeeps or tell captives she was going to gut them like fish. "And we're going to make it hurt, _Schatz._ We're going to make it _hurt_."

Caleb doesn't waste breath begging. He's been waiting for this day for a long time. They were always going to come for him, always going to find him and spread his guts over the floor. Open him up like a curious bit of clockwork without bothering to put him back together. All of his careful vigilance, all of his protective measures- they were never going to be enough. Not to escape Vollstreckers. Not to escape his friends.

There's a horrible sound, a thin, high screeching like nails on a chalkboard or- a knife on crystal-

"I'm going to break every bone in that pretty body, Ermendrud, one by one. Maybe I'll make you keep count." Eodwulf is all but _purring_ , somewhere out of sight but sounding much too close. And Caleb is painfully hard, straining against his breeches, probably leaking enough precum to soak through the fabric. His heart is in his throat and his brain is desperately running through all the information he has, trying to work out a possible escape route even as he knows there isn’t one.

"I'm going to slit your throat, _Schatz,_ so very slowly. Oh, it's _really_ going to hurt." The tone of her voice is exactly the same as the last time she told him she loved him, quiet and pleased and so very sure of herself.

"A-ah," he manages, lungs stinging and vision swimming. "Astrid…"

Thin cold fingers wrap around his throat, not squeezing so much as holding, and then he feels the sharp, icy-cold point of a knife under his jaw. It forces him to tilt his head up, to further bare his throat, and the last thing he feels before the knife glides cleanly across his throat is a soft kiss to his Adam's apple.

Caleb wakes up with a start, bedroll and clothes drenched with sweat and hair plastered to his face. He's so damp and uncomfortable all over that it takes him a moment to realize he's come in his pants. Once he’s aware of it, it’s all he can feel, sticky cooling cum on his skin and smallclothes. _Disgusting._ His brain tells him it's 3:17 in the morning, far too early to justify waking everyone up so he can drop the bubble just to rinse off in the creek. He may be selfish and disgusting, but he will not rob his friends of their much-needed rest. He turns onto his side, curls into himself, and tries desperately to keep from scratching his arms bloody and raw. When he finally manages to fall back asleep, he does not dream.

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: caleb being threatened, caleb being killed in a dream, caleb getting off on all of this, moderately detailed threats/descriptions of violence. 
> 
> thanks for reading! drop a comment if you wanna


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